The concept worked, and since then, said Berman, “we have essentially doubled our heart transplant activity, every single year”. By reanimating those hearts using the machine, doctors could assess whether the organ was salvageable for transplantation. In 2015 doctors at RPH pioneered the use of the machine to revive hearts from donors who had suffered cardiac death. The idea behind the machine was to allow for the organ to be transported across long distances. However, a “heart in a box” machine – called an Organ Care System (OCS), developed by the American company TransMedics – was engineered to emulate the human body, keeping the heart warm, beating and pumping blood so it is healthy for transport to the recipient. Previously, hearts were transported for intended recipients in sterile iceboxes. So there is no way that we can assess if the heart is working well … that’s why it won’t be safe to retrieve the heart because we wouldn’t know how it functions.” Marius Berman, a consultant cardiothoracic transplant surgeon at Royal Papworth hospital (RPH) in Cambridge, said that after cardiac death the heart is “like an inflated balloon.

Heart Box instal the new